The 2015 general election results in more detail

On Tuesday I summarised the surprise results of the DUK’s general election, today I will look at the results in a little more detail. I will finish this series of blogs next week, when I discuss how the results would have looked if the DUK used a different form of voting to the current ‘first past the post’ system.

The results in England

Below is a summary of the results in England – of the 533 seats in England the Conservative won 319 (59.8%), Labour 206 (38.6%), Lib Dems 6 (1.1%), UKIP 1 (0.025%) and the Green Pary 1 (0.025%). In terms of percentages of the vote, the Conservative party won 41% of the vote, Labour 31.6%, the Lib-Dems 8.2%, UKIP 14.1% (more than the Lib-Dems, even though they only got 1 seat) and the Green Party 4.2%.

The electoral map for England. As can be seen, most of England is a sea of blue, with Labour confined mainly to the urban areas of London, greater Manchester, Merseyside and Tyneside in the north-east.

If we zoom in on London even more we can see how few Tory seats there are in the Greater London area. It is an island of red in a sea of Tory blue.

London is predominantly Labour, but is surrounded by a sea of blue Conservative seats

The biggest change since 2010 was the percentage of the vote which went to the Lib-Dems, their share of the vote dropped by 16%. Conversely, UKIP (the United Kingdom Independence Party, whose main policy is to withdraw the UK from the European Union) improved their share of the vote by 10.7% in England.

The percentage of the vote for each party in England.

The results in Scotland

As I mentioned in my blog on Tuesday, the result in Scotland was, for me, the biggest surprise of the 2015 general election. Although, to be fair to the pollsters, many were predicting that the Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) would win most of the seats in Scotland, I personally expected it to maybe around half of the 59 seats, not the 56 that they won. The three main UK parties have been reduced to just one seat each, with Labour being all but wiped out from Scotland. Their losses in Scotland are the main reason that Labour actually have fewer seats than they won in the 2010 election.

The electoral map for Scotland, where the SNP swept the board, all but wiping out the three main UK parties who are left with one seat each

With 50% of the vote, the SNP won 56 of Scotland’s 59 seats (95%), Labour got 24.3% of the vote but won only 1 seat (1.7%), the Conservatives got 14.9% of the vote but also won only 1 seat (1.7%), and the Lib-Dems got 7.5% of the vote but got only 1 seat (1.7%). Although UKIP obtained 1.6% of the vote and the Greens 1.3% of the vote; neither won a seat in Scotland.

The percentage of the vote for each party in Scotland. The SNP got 50% of the vote, but because of the ‘first past the post’ system, won 56 of the 59 seats in Scotland.

The surge in support for the SNP has been truly remarkable, up 30% from the 2010 general election. As I mentioned on Tuesday, this is particularly surprising given the ‘no’ vote in last September’s Scottish independence referendum. Rather than the SNP’s support going down since that ‘no’ vote, it has actually increased and they are now the dominant party in Scotland by some margin. It will be interesting to see how they get on in next May’s Scottish parliament elections, where they are already the majority party. Will they sweep the board there too? Well, in fact, they are highly unlikely to do so; because some of the seats in the Scottish Parliament are determined by proportional representation (in Wales, 30 of the 60 seats in the Welsh Assembly are determined by PR). Assuming half the seats in the Scottish Parliament are also determined by PR, the chances of their having 95% of the seats there are very small; but they may well increase their majority.

The results in Wales

In Wales, Labour remain the dominant party. They won 25 of the 40 seats, with the Conservatives winning 11 (3 more than in 2010). Plaid Cymru held on to their 3 seats, but the Lib Dems were reduced from 3 seats to now only 1.

The electoral map for Wales, which remains predominantly Labour. Plaid Cymru retained their three seats, but the Lib Dems lost two of their three seats to the Conservatives, who also won a seat from Labour in the north-east of Wales to gain 3 seats overall.

Wales has been predominantly Labour ever since the Labour party was formed in the early 1900s. It has never voted for a large number of Conservative MPs, in fact the current 11 could be the highest it has held in Wales. Does anybody know? In contrast, after the 1997 General Election (when Tony Blair swept to power), the Tories had no seats at all in Wales.

A surprising result for me in Wales was that the Conservative percentage of the vote (27.2%) actually increased from the 2010 general election result, but clearly the big losers in Wales were the Lib-Dems, who lost two seats and are now left with only one seat in Wales. Their percentage of the vote dropped by -13.6%, and UKIP’s vote surged by 11.2%, although because of the first past the post system they did not win any seats. Plaid Cymru had targeted Ynys Môn (the island of Anglesey) as a seat they could win, but Labour held on to it, albeit with a small majority of only 229 (Plaid increased its vote and Labour’s share went down, but it was not quite enough for Plaid to take it).

The percentage of the votes in Wales. Despite UKIP winning 13.6% of the vote, they did not win any seats. This is the first time UKIP have obtained more votes than Plaid Cymru

Labour’s share of the vote in Wales was 36.9%, up slightly from the 2010 election, but they lost two of their seats to the Conservatives – including the seat of Gower in west Wales which is the first time this seat has not been Labour in over 100 years. The Lib-Dems lost two seats, including one in Cardiff, which they lost to Labour. The other two seats the Conservatives gained was a Lib-Dem seat in mid-Wales and a Labour seat in north-east Wales.

The results in Northern Ireland

Politics in Northern Ireland is very different to that in the rest of the Disunited Kingdom. Labour and the Lib-Dems do not stand for election in NI, and even the Conservative party are a tiny minority. Politics there is dominated by parties which are not found anywhere else, and are split between ‘unionist’ parties (parties which want NI to remain part of the United Kingdom), and ‘republican’ parties (parties which want to see NI leave the United Kingdom and re-unite with the rest of Irish). Sinn Fein, who won four seats (down one seat from 2010) do not take up their seats in Westminster as they refuse to swear an oath of allegiance to the Queen.

The electoral map in Northern Ireland. The only ‘British’ parties which stand in Northern Ireland are the Conservative Party, UKIP and the Greens, so most of the parties dominant in NI are not found in other countries of the DUK

The main gains in NI were made by the Ulster Unionist Party, who won two seats and went from having zero MPs in the 2010 to now having two. Sinn Fein (the Irish Nationalist Party) lost one seat to go down to four seats.

The percentage of the votes for each party in Northern Ireland

Concluding remarks

Next week, I will discuss how different the House of Commons would be if the Disunited Kingdom were to use proportional representation rather than the current ‘first past the post’ system. It is clear from the details of the general election results above that the make-up would be quite different. I think the results of this election are amongst the most surprising of any general election I can remember, and I feel that they have created more interest in politics than there has been for a couple of decades. After saying that, the percentage of people who did not vote (33.9%) is larger than the percentage won by the Conservatives (24.4%), and this is clearly a worry. The Scottish referendum had a voter turnout of over 80%, so this general election’s turnout of 66.1% is not great. Should voting be compulsory, like it is in Australia?

Like this:

Related

3 Responses

The last question is a really nice one. Personally, I think yes. But then again, I’m starting to think that we, the millennials, have the technology in place to introduce a process wherein people vote directly on the issues rather than elect representatives. But that debate is for another day.

I was shocked to see that more than 200,000+ Welsh people voted for UKIP. Slightly surprised that you didn’t highlight that as a cause for concern in your post. Isn’t it depressing that such a large number support a radical right wing faction?